Pity the religious conservatives. Four years ago, the Republican
Party was putty in their hands. Or, at least, it acted like it was. Now
the leading Republican candidates all act as if the same born-again
Christian leaders whom their party once fawned over are nuisances to be
ignored whenever possible.
Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Fred Thompson all
skipped last month’s “Values Voter Presidential Debate” in Fort
Lauderdale, Florida, a snub to the religious right that left members of
the once-feared special-interest group directing their questions and
threats toward empty lecterns. Romney, a Mormon and one of the top
frontrunners, makes no apologies for not being the kind of evangelical
the religious right tends to prefer. And worse, Giuliani, with his
support for abortion and gay rights, is giving people like James Dobson
fits and doesn’t seem to mind one bit.
At a secret meeting of religious conservatives in Salt Lake City
last month, Dobson and several other like-minded leaders vowed to do
something about this state of affairs, hammering out a resolution
calling for the religious right to consider running a third-party
candidate if “a pro-abortion candidate,” meaning Giuliani, gets the
nomination. But their move, with its hedged language (“we will
consider running a third-party candidate”) only served to
highlight the severely diminished options that
religious
conservatives now have.
In Washington State, where Romney leads the Republican field in
fundraising (followed by McCain and Giuliani), it’s hard to find a
religious conservative who’s happy with the Republican lineup.
Although, truth be told, it’s hard to find a religious conservative who
even wants to talk about the Republican lineup. Jeff Kemp, president of
Families Northwest, a group devoted to promoting traditional marriage,
declined the opportunity to discuss his presidential preferences.
Pastor Ken Hutcherson of Redmond’s Antioch Bible Church did not respond
to requests for an interview. Other leaders of this state’s relatively
small religious right either could not be reached or didn’t want to air
their grievances.
However, Jon Russell, executive director of the Faith and Freedom
Network, was game. “It’s going to be an interesting year,” said
Russell, whose organization claims an activist base of about 10,000
religious conservatives in this state. “I’ve never seen anything like
it.”
Russell told me that the people he talks to mention Mike Huckabee
and Sam Brownback as relatively attractive choices, even though neither
of the candidates’ campaigns are going anywhere at the moment. He
blames President Bush for the lack of a viable Republican frontrunner
who’s also a religious conservative. “Usually there’s one candidate
that everyone rallies around,” Russell told me. “But the president, to
his disservice, has not set anyone up to run.” What Russell was really
upset about, it seemed to me, was that there is simply no reincarnation
of Bush in the current Republican field—no one willing to be as
brazen in courting, and catering to, the evangelical voter.
All of this leaves Russell mulling over what Bush has actually done
for the religious conservative movement (“At the end of the day, the
best thing we got out of the whole thing was some good judges on the
Supreme Court”) and thinking about ways in which it may not matter who
the Republicans end up picking. Russell said he felt that Hillary
Clinton as the Democratic nominee would mean a Republican victory even
if religious conservatives weren’t excited about the party’s eventual
standard-bearer. “I think Hillary Clinton’s going to have a hard time
getting above 50 percent,” he told me, sounding more hopeful than
certain.
Would Russell support a third-party effort if Giuliani gets the
Republican nomination? “I think it’s premature to be talking about a
third party,” he said. “He still has to get through the primary.”
* * *
Hillary Clinton, intent on creating a
sense of her own
inevitability as the Democratic primaries approach, announced on
October 8 that former Washington State governor Gary Locke had endorsed
her candidacy. Locke becomes the third in a rapidly widening circle of
Washington “co-chairs” for the Clinton campaign, the first two being
Representative Jay Inslee and King County Executive Ron Sims.
“Gary was a visionary governor and he will be a tremendous asset to
our campaign as we take our message of change across Washington,”
Clinton said in a statement. The announcement did not seem likely to do
anything about the fact that Barack Obama has raised more money, and
generated more excitement, than Clinton has in Washington State. But it
did come at a time when polls in two states that matter much more in
the primary process—Iowa and New Hampshire—showed Clinton
with a commanding lead. And the candidate herself will soon have a
chance to try to drum up more excitement in Washington: She’ll be here
on October 22 to keynote a Democratic awards banquet at Benaroya Hall,
her first visit to the state during this campaign season. 
